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Student Loan...What Loan?

Image: Reuters

“If you give me the last cookie, I’ll be your best friend forever! Or – I’ll give you a gazillion pounds! …Please can I have the last cookie?”

We have all said things like this; pleading for trivial forgiveness, to get a piggyback, or…maybe borrow a fiver?

…This also seems to be a pretty good analogy for our current student loan system, especially after woundingly losing the battle to keep tuition fees at the £3,500 a year mark. Remember the violent protests? How did this happen?

Pondering would-be students of today are all but unworldly toddlers in the sand pit, jumping vigorously while begging an older kid: “Please student loans, give me an average education and some mediocre hope of a job?”

While the bigger kid holds the sandpit toy high above the toddler’s head.

“O.K, but, you have to be my slave forever and pay me a gazillion pounds.”

“Oh, O.K”

“Here you go.” The bigger kid passes the toddler the sandpit toy.

Can you picture £50,000 in notes? Do you think a 17-year-old can accurately picture this money in physical form? No? Then why is it now O.K to ask them to decide if this is the amount of debt they are fine being burdening with, possibly for life, for three years of questionable, institutionalised education.

This amount is indescribable to most, to young people choosing university from A levels, it’s very unlikely they have had more than a thousand pounds to their name in one go…and they’re being told to think of borrowing up to £50,000...in three years.

“How are you going to cope with your student debt?” I get asked this all the time. The truth is; I don’t deal with it. I’m a toddler with a plastic spade – a spade that doesn’t even form its primary function of digging particularly well; but it’s O.K, I’ll be the big kids slave for a bit, maybe even give him some of my pocket money. But I am never going to give them a gazillion pounds – simply because I can’t give it to him - even if I wanted to, it’s a fictional number - even the big kid knows this...so why the infantile charades of student loans?

The earnings threshold for student loan repayment stands at £15,000 p.a, for loans taken out in between 1998 – 2012. Pre 1998 it is £26,000, however student finance says repayments are currently 9% of wages above £21,000 (so £1,890 a year)…then student loan repayment says it’s now between £15,000 and £16,000 depending on which year you studied…Figure that one out.

The apparent, average starting wage for a graduate is £26,000. These figures are based largely on graduate schemes in MASSIVE CORPORATIONS, indexed by AGR.

According to studentbeans it’s £20,000.

For Highfliers (funnily enough for highflying employers), think it’s £29,000.

As a near graduate applying for jobs…WHERE ARE THESE JOBS? Probably finance and law. But that’s a difference of £9,000 – or to put it in better perspective: a year’s tuition (nearly three year’s tuition pre 2012). So which is it?

Frankly I don’t know any graduates earning more than £18,000…most aren’t earning anything; in internships, or are on minimum and low wages. As a recent Pew survey shows, under 35’s are earning 68% less than their counter parts in 1984. The New York Times recently reported on the shocking hours young people are working in incredibly under paid internships and entry level jobs. A horrific 20,000 are unemployed in the U.K; some can’t even afford to go to their own graduation ceremony!

Luckily for me, as Monbiot says, freelancing writers planning to work in developing countries, can get by like Kings on under £6,000 a year, how slightly sneaky, but immensely tempting…and well below the threshold for loan repayments…

This attitude of ‘beating the system’, (sometimes without even trying), seems to be a general consensus among a lot of other students too.

On one forum on paying back student loans, a user commented: “[Student finance] do [write debt] off after 25 years, so the way things are going I will never have to pay it back.”

Or, on the same forum there is always moving out of this cesspit for opportunity, I mean, the UK:

“I live in Canada now so.....what can Student Loans Company actually do? Send me a few angry letters? Can they try and get a CCJ against me when I don't live in Britain? I've not lived in the UK since 2007 and never intend living there again. The bank account that I had linked with them closed 10 years ago.”

Vice, although aimed at American student debtors, gives comical advice, on just not paying and seeing if you end up in a fiery pit of immortal agony and unhappiness or not.



How far away from this are UK students?
Image: PressTV

It seems the idea of raking up pennies from desperately under employed graduates for their entire lives, could back-fire. The price, with interest, has sky-rocketed to be completely out of proportion with what graduates can comfortably pay back in their life time. Or with the epically catastrophic UK job market snubbing youthful talent, graduates are considering running away to other continents to escape the debilitating clutches of student debt.

The government and pro-student debt risers claimed increasing fees would make students ‘think twice’ about going to university. Although application’s decreased last year, it might be doing just the opposite. If you can’t actually contemplate the money you are spending on your education – how can you think about it twice? Would the government actually retain more money if the fees were lower?

The amount of seemingly ‘free’ money ‘provided’ for education, in the form of debt we might never be able to pay, or pay back very little of, might as well be monopoly money. The shear exaggerated cost means the whole concept of money, debt; being financially independent…the whole economy, is put into a fantastical perspective for young people and students today.

As Nicholas Barr said, we might as well forget about student loans . Why stress about something we might never pay back? By no means don’t stop campaigning, don’t give up fighting. But, what are they going to do? Start stripping us of our worthless degrees? Maybe then we’d earn more…

Another user on the same forum raised the ironic question:

“How do you get a degree, and then not earn enough to pay the fees back?? I thought the whole point of getting a degree meant you should be earning more than those of us who never got one?”

So did we all thoughtful comment producer, so did we all.

20-Something Reviews "How to be a 20-Something"

How to be a 20-Something

Spawned from the New York Times' article on the trend in non-commital "emerging adults" - this collection of essays is a response from various 20-somethings at Thought Catalog, supposedly a reflection on youthful life...blogging on such complications, I thought I better take a look...


There’s a fear when you read something about you. O.K not me, exactly, firstly I've not graduated yet, or American, as these essayists mostly are. But I am a 20-something. Monumental heart pounding ensues when clicking through the Kindle-for-PC (yes I am that poor I can't afford a kindle) pages of something that is supposed to be 'ME'.

Trepidation continues as reading the blurb of the egotistical self-accounts of one-night-standees, druggies, lonesome binge drinkers and vague relationships…how patronising. Some (unbelievably minuscule) dignity within me turns its nose up…while the majority of my brain rambunctiously bawls in belly laughter, wiping a tear from an eye thinking: ‘Oh fuck it’s so true, it’s so true’, then blaming it all on my age. Like apologetic parents with a one-year-old that just threw up on everything. It’s O.K, I’m only a 20-something; I’m allowed to throw up on everything.

From the hilarious drug cock up, The 3 Times I Took Ambien, ending in an affectionate email to her boss - who hasn't berated themselves while under the influence with: did I just write LOVE on the end of that professional email, yes, yes I did, what’s WRONG with me?! To an A & E incident in Funny Drug Story ...you should be contemplating your own funny drug story, right now...aren't you? Your own self induced A&E stories? It’s O.K, I’m smiling to myself thinking of several right now.

Followed by years whittled away watching absolute crap, monotonous shit you know is rotting your expensively educated brain, accompanied with a bottle of wine that is definitely not to share: How To Drink At Home By Yourself - important instructions on lonesome drinking while you mindlessly indulge in TV, dusty academic books weeping in the background at your infidelity. 'I never do this' my false dignity replies.

Of course the spiral puzzle of romantic (or incredibly unromantic) relationships can't go unmentioned in these essays. How To Have Sex With Me One Time – exploring why it's best to offer sexual partners nothing more, than the simple body warmth we all crave in our beloved 20's. Probably my favourite is How To Have A Vague Relationship – avoid labels and cautiously cuddle. Obviously. Self righteous essay. Dabbling in our apparent inability to commit to doctor's appointments, let alone relationships in our 20's. My small amount of dignity argues patronising intent again, while the other half of me laughs uncontrollably as I move on to Notes on Dating a Crazy Girl …after reading this essay, dating a crazy girl is now somehow an aspiration of mine... it’s just written so comically.

I hate to admit it, but the essays really do read wonderfully like a ‘how to’ book of life, as the lead title suggests. I do like it when expectations match reality.

For those 20-somethings not even mastering a vague relationship and one night stands there is: A Checklist for Single People, ‘sleep diagonal cause you can’ – I thought I was the ONLY person in the world who slept diagonally...cause I can...yay?

Followed by a more general list: A Checklist for Your Mid-20s, I felt so warm and fuzzy to see the phrases ‘first world guilt’ and ‘fuck I blacked out last night’ are part of said list.

In between reading bursts, guilt clutches my body in an ice grip. A massive ghost fist groping me and forcing my eyes back to being “productive” – writing applications for jobs I don’t want…my eyeball slides down my face out of the ice-ghost grip, skimming: I am Extremely Talented and Important. Dam right I am, the essay reminds me: I shouldn't even be writing these applications, they should be writing to me, begging for my youthful blood. One day they’ll realise I’m a genius…right?

No because You’ll Never Get Your Shit Together. Glad we got that sorted; it was weighing my chest down something awful. We all knew it, but it’s good to have it in writing, on a convenient PC Kindle. Yes I am still that poor.

What 20-Somethings Want – surely we all want different things? As complex individuals sprayed over a decade? ‘someone to pick you up from the airport’...Finding myself at many lonesome airports recently – again, my brain rattles through suffocating emotion. Stop crying you twat. ‘But it’s so true, so bloody true, that is all I want’ my brain sniffles. The essays KNOW somehow. You fool, go back to writing job applications.

After, I did what anyone my age would do. I shared it on Twitter and Facebook of course. As covered in Meet Me Offline, please DO meet me offline, I nodded to the screen…logging back into Facebook to tell anyone online that will just LISTEN…about this magnificent literature I have found, which talks like a gorgeous horse whisperer to my soul. Or at least laments some relatable situations in a humorous and engaging fashion.

These resonating essays fulfilled every crevice of the void they were supposed to fill. Reminding me I don’t have to know what I’m doing with my life, just as long as I’m living it. A comforting reminder that I am not crazy, not a binge drinker, a slacker, a fail, a slut or a druggie – I’m just a 20-something, and there is an abundant many more like me; writing amusing essays to support all these age defined likenesses. I may never finish these job applications or own a kindle, but it's all O.K - there's this written concensus, I'm not supposed to anytime soon.

The essays end, on the poignant revolver which starts the sprint through 20-something life: you’re only going to end up another wrinkle eyed 30-year-old, bedraggled and cursing: ‘Oh shit, I’m no longer a 20–Something.’